Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 625 posts

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#151

Post by handzhiev »

pmarreck wrote: post #27

Wherever there is difficulty, there is also opportunity. I think the major thing stopping people from just going their own way is healthcare coverage. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) I wonder if I can hack a business model that somehow provides healthcare but also gathers together sourced projects, and freelancers to bid on building them, while also getting healthcare. (And if you opt out of healthcare, you can take the d…

I don't think healthcare alone is stopping people from going on their own. What could a developer do on their own? Start a startup? Extremely hard and risky. Freelancing? Requires marketing and lots of other stuff most of us suck at. And the freelancing market isn't that much better now either.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#152

Post by nickpsecurity »

arendtio wrote: post #130

I think your categories ('white male', 'Indian', ...) are a form of racism already. I mean, there are other categories you can use. Outsourcing, offshoring, and nearshoring all describe something similar (cutting costs by replacing the workforce) but do not categorize humans based on racial factors. I understand this is not the core of your question, but I did not want to leave it uncommented because I think it is in…

Many companies officially endorse systematic racism under the banner of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). They isn’t just trying to exclude white males to hire more of the opposite traits. Many will have support groups for non-whites and non-males for their specific issues, special training that can lead to promotions which whites can’t have, and put out posters or videos displaying non-whites to show how much they care [if you’re not white].

I ran into this quite a few times when looking for AI companies. They often put it prominently in the About Us pages or their annual report. Some organizations were also giving grants or mentoring only to minority members.

That DEI makes hiring decisions partly based on race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. means it shouldn’t surprise you at all that someone mentions it as a hiring factor. If they hired X non-whites, then up to X whites may have been rejected depending on the makeup of the candidate pool. That’s just how systematic racism works. It should be abolished.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#154

Post by lifestyleguru »

missedthecue wrote: post #138
nicbou wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was on everyone’s lips for a few years, to the point that it had become the placeholder for the entire meme. The short version is that there is a shortage of skilled workers that absolutely requires immigrants to fill the gaps. However when you look around there isn’t really a shortage; people just aren’t willing to work for little pay. The English term implies that there is an actual shortage. It might please you…

Does this imply that people would rather be broke than work for less pay than they want? How are they paying rent each month?

Less pay in EU means working to afford only the rent, bills, and groceries. One is better off doing nothing professionally and living off their savings. Well, the 2025 is going to be interesting....

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#155

Post by warner25 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #110
RGamma wrote: post #5

And if you look at e.g. Bachelor's enrollment in CS it's somehow still rising in Fall of 2024: https://nscresearchcenter.org/stay-informed/ That's gonna be one rude awakening.

Classic "buying on the high" behavior, we saw this in 1998/99 also.

I've been fascinated by the boom in university CS departments since I was a CS major myself during the low point between 1999-2001 and the start of the current boom. At my alma mater with a total undergrad enrollment between 10-20k, my graduating class of CS majors had just 23 people. The department didn't even have its own building. For a number of years now, CS has been the most popular major there (graduating hundreds per year) and the CS department's newly constructed building is perhaps the most iconic building in the whole city (it's an urban campus). I keep asking myself how long this can really go on.

I have little doubt, by the way, that the booming compensation for software folks in recent years is partially a function of how few people in their mid-30s to early-40s today did CS degrees during undergrad.

For undergrads today, though, I suppose the good question is "what else is there?" (i.e. providing a path to an upper-middle class American lifestyle). Pre-med programs have long been over-enrolled with med school admissions being super competitive. Business and law degrees only matter if they come from the top schools where admissions have long been super competitive. My own kids will start having to figure this out soon, and I don't know what I'll suggest.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#156

Post by ajmurmann »

Dig1t wrote: post #143

I work at Apple and we have a policy (new in 2024) where we are not allowed to make an offer for a manager position to a candidate unless we have interviewed a PoC or a woman for the roll. The stated goal for this policy is “diverse managers hire diverse teams”. So right off the bat we are discriminating based on race and gender. Look at the published diversity data on the Apple website, the company is now 50% Asian…

IMO the difference between "interviewed" and "hired" here is crucial. I had a similar rule at my previous job. If anything I felt the risk was that this would be abused to the detriment of the URM candidate. If you have a strong candidate coming through but haven't met the URM interview retirement yet, it's tempting to not look for a "real" candidate but just go through the motions with the next candidate who matches the DEI requs. Fortunately, I can say I'd never have to give in to that temptation but the real loser would be the person who got to waste a ton of time and nervous on an interview for which they were set up to haul from the get go.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#157

Post by brianwawok »

w4ffl35 wrote: post #140
derektank wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why, exactly? These companies have foreign customers, it seems reasonable to expect that they would also want to have foreign employees that can speak the language, work in the same time zone, etc. And the demand for those employees is unlikely to be perfectly commensurate with demand for US based employees at all times. Seems like a ban would be pretty destructive, even if some of this hiring is an attempt at offsho…

If a company is operating in a foreign nation sure. If a company is operating in America on American soil and refusing to hire Americans because they want to save a buck, they should face penalties. I do not see hiring foreigners as being pro-American.

Then make this choice when you own a company. What % of your paycheck are you willing to donate to being pro America?

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#158

Post by throwaway-100 »

Small startup tech-cofounder here so definitely won’t apply to large companies. Only interviewed candidates sourced through referrals because the risk of a wrong hire is way too high for us. I also noticed a pattern where more senior devs tend to not be as hungry as a a younger dev, and I don’t mean accepting a lower pay, in fact we pay higher salaries for a mid level position. We require (relatively) a lot of customer facing time and product management/discovery activities and may not be everyone cup of tea.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#159

Post by nickff »

w4ffl35 wrote: post #150
nickff wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of companies; Americans have a spectrum of views, as do corporations. In addition, both individuals and corporations are capable of talking out of both sides of their mouth (or just plain lying).

Yes there are a lot of companies, and yes people and companies can lie. I'm not really sure how this negates what I said or my view on the matter. Globalization is the antithesis of the America First movement.

Some industries do face shortages in short term skilled labor supply; they might be able to get more people trained up in 5-10 years, with enough investment, but you can’t get a journeyman ready in three months. Others just want more supply, to reduce labor costs and make domestic production cost-competitive with foreign equivalents. Neither of those groups is lying.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#160

Post by mxuribe »

FireBeyond wrote: post #100
mxuribe wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been at the receiving end of ageism, and what i now do is drop off some of the older experience(s) from my resume, etc. Also, i try to avoid listing my graduation year from university. Some people suggest even if not fighting off ageism, its only relevant to list the last decade of experience on a resume anyway...so if i ever get questioned, i'd use that as an excuse...but, my strategy is simply to get my foot i…

I'm in my early 40s and struggle at times because although my hair is black, my beard is entirely silver, which (I think) adds 10+ years to me. And while I'm at the IC5/6 level in Product, I still worry about it, and think if I had to find a new job, sorry, fiancée who loves my beard, it has to go, or I think I'm going to have a hard time.

Yeah, if i were you and needed to win job interviews, i'd simply trim it - if only temporarily. Although, its sad of me to say, i agree with @logicchains that it might not be a bad idea to dye your beard....but i suppose might be easier to simply cut it. /sigh

Good luck!

Post reply on HN